I flipped to page three, page four, page seven. Vanessa tapped her acrylic nails on the table, sighing loud enough for the floor to hear. ‘Nora, it’s not a novel. Sign it.’ I looked up and asked, gently, if she wanted to call Marcus in before I signed. Her smile flickered. ‘Marcus? Marcus from legal?’ No, I said. Marcus Halloway. The CEO. Her nails stopped tapping. I pulled my phone from my blazer pocket and turned the screen toward her. It was an email thread. Marcus had reached out to me three weeks ago after an intern accidentally cc’d him on the raw model files — files timestamped, version-controlled, and authored under my login going back to January. He’d asked me to keep quiet until he ‘observed a pattern.’ The most recent email, sent that morning, read: ‘Nora, let her make the offer. I want to see how far she’ll go. I’ll be watching from the boardroom camera. — M.’ Vanessa’s face drained of color so fast I actually felt a flicker of pity. The conference room door opened behind her. Marcus stepped in, followed by two people from HR and a woman carrying a slim folder. ‘Vanessa,’ he said, calm as a Sunday morning, ‘we’ve been reviewing the last four projects you presented to the board. Every single one traces back to a direct report. Please hand Nora her laptop and gather your things.’ Vanessa opened her mouth. Nothing came out. Marcus turned to me. ‘Nora, the board approved your promotion twenty minutes ago. Director of Analytics. Your office is the one at the end of the hall — the one with the window.’ I stood up slowly, picked up the offer letter Vanessa had slid toward me, and tore it neatly in half. ‘I think,’ I said quietly, ‘I’ll write my own.’ As I walked past her, I heard the whole floor erupt in applause through the glass. Vanessa was still sitting in the chair, staring at the space where I used to be.
